Bitwig is so great and so flawed at the same time.

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Yes, yet again, another guy's rant about bitwig, but sometimes you need to get something off your chest.

Bitwig is genius as provided at providing a better workflow than Ableton and retaining its device ideology for sound design and construction which i truly love but it is so flawed at the same time and it makes me wanna cry cause i am missing so many features that i see in other Daws and i just don't understand why Bitwig as chosen to implement the Grid and polish up on help contextual menus instead of giving us productivity tools.

The midi aspect of Bitwig is really poor and it is basic and it is a stark contrast compared to how deep it can go sound design wise.

What you gain in sound design is limited so much and often times lost with the current midi form of the program.

I go in FL Studio, there is like a bazillion tools in the midi- chords painter, scale help, arpegios generators, note editing tools and good contextual menus that allow you to flip things around and tweak them on a click of a mouse. The only thing you can do is paint your notes and then your chords if you know them and that is about it as far as it goes and i really hate that.

I hope that in 2020 that they start getting serious about the midi tools inside the program and leave the bells and whistle synths behind for a while. That is going to determine if i actually renew my subscription or actually hold off on it.

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I agree. I really hope midi abilities get a big bump in 2020.
Something tells me we'll see it soon too. I think the absence of fully-featured midi output from the Grid may be a sign of work in this area.

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Chord Track and MIDI Generator like in Tracktion's Waveform 10! With the ability to do Studio One chord recognition of audio file.

Thank you and I really want a programmatic way to build a arp and sequencer so it is like NI Noire's Particles Engine.
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Bitwig is my DAWs and UHe and Tracktion Synths are my Bae. I maybe buy one synth a year. REMEMBER SELF just one synth a year!

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I do only a little editing in the piano roll... I play notes in and if I didn’t play it how I want it, I play it again. I don’t need chord help, chord tracks or ‘smart’ assistance.

Midi step input would be a useful feature for me... I would also like to see a Midi Grid device.

But I’m happy to see Bitwig add the midi stuff people want.

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I went back to Ableton Live just because the missing features in Bitwig and a lot of bugs. But I really love Bitwig, and would go back to it as soon as it becomes a mature DAW. Right now, I can't work profesionnally with it sadly...

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I do a lot of editing in the piano roll, but it is mainly working on melody and chords structures by hand. Never used tools like FL studio. I can only imagine some kind of chord inversions would be great. What is miss most is to audition notes. In Logic you can step through the piano roll and it will play the notes. So no need to press play or rewind to hear if a progression works.
The thing I miss most currently are some interface refinements. Adjust values with arrow keys, move clips with arrow keys, scrolling (smooth, not jump ) through the arrangement with shortcut keys. Sometimes I curse and go back to Ableton which I know like the back of my hand and have been using since V4. I still value Ableton for it's focus and simplicity and great devices. But then I realise. I can't scroll the arrangement (when a clips is selected), I CAN adjust the values with the keys, but CAN't enter values, cut notes in half, round robin samples.. I agree Bitwig does seem to focus on tech/nerdy features instead of refinements in UI or producer focussed features. But I still prefer it over Ableton or Logic even though I'm a trained pianist /producer/ linear arrangement kind of guy.

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M-Prod wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 11:23 amI CAN adjust the values with the keys, but CAN't enter values
Sure you can - if you click on any label with value just start typing the number on the keyboard.
Music tech enthusiast
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

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Hmm, there are a lot of MIDI devices that you can be creative with. I think this is just different workflow for you, that you can't adapt to yourself. Its the same as Ableton Live - simple MIDI editing in piano roll, but more advanced with MIDI devices.

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Also "so great and so flawed at the same time" could be said about any DAW :D

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Enrize wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 12:47 pm Also "so great and so flawed at the same time" could be said about any DAW :D
Exactly! :clap:

Those that complain - including myself, occasionally ;) - rarely look at how much time Bitwig saves in other areas, to make up for things that it's missing or that are not developed enough... For me I spend probably 5-10% of the time in MIDI editor, while the reminder is is sound design, building device chains, editing presets or doing my own, modulation & automation. I'm not saying I don't want MIDI editor improvements, because I obviously do! But even if it stays like it is, it doesn't matter for me because 90-95% of the time I spend with Bitwig is where it saves me time, not to mention I simply can't do some of the stuff in Cubase or S1. And no matter how great FL or Reaper are, I'm repulsed by their interfaces & endless menus, so even if I can write a riff or chord progression 2-3x as fast, no one can force me to use them :)
Music tech enthusiast
DAW, VST & hardware hoarder
My "music": https://soundcloud.com/antic604

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Bitwig is the better gui version of Ableton. You have to give it that.
For me Ableton is the superior DAW but i just cannot get around that Ableton is basically 2 editors in one and you either have to decided which one to use to build your tracks.
It is a mental process that gets in the way and is hard to grasp for new people wanting to get in in DAWS.

Bitwig gets rid of that problem by removing the barrier that Ableton is imposing, but by the same token if Ableton would fix that "particular issue" it would just crush Bitwig. So in reality Bitwig "has been "lucky" so far that the Ableton team is said to be unwilling to change this aspect of their software which is mind boggling since they are losing market share to Bitwig.

If Ableton would finally decide to clean this aspect up, i would move to ableton because they have a bazillion ton worth of content that you can buy to add to your toolbox versus Bitwig but bitwig gains by the modules which yet again ableton could crush with just one update if they would like to do so.

I like the Ableton interface better because it is clearer and less hard on the eyes than bitwig and feels more spacious. The bitwig browser pane on the right is atrocious to me and should be like Ableton , Cubase or studio one. I hate moving those seperators up and down and they dont always cooperate and annoys me to no end. The real browser is also cluttered and hard to navigate and slow down creativity.

But like i said, Bitwig needs to hit hard with the midi tools. I don't think it would be that hard to reverse engineer what others did in their daws and put in in Bitwig as everyone is stealing features from one another and leap frogging things in their updated and release.

The closest i am getting to my perfect DAW would be studio one as it is the best DAW "editor" but there is no modulation and the effect are somewhat archaic and today you need to sound different to try to make it and Bitwig allows you to do that so basically i am running around in circles and hoping that Bitwig finally catches up with better editing. I can live with it but the work arounds you have to take slows you down considerably.

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I will disagree about browser. Ableton Live browser (alongside with Logic Pro X) is the worst implementation for me. Search is a joke, tagging, filtering, management is also a joke. Ever tried to work with Splice library inside Ableton?

On the other hand Bitwig browser is the best i've seen in a DAW. I've never been so fast than with Bitwig browser. When you spent an hour or two and organise everything up.

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I still would prefer workflow, workflow, workflow improvements, e.g. extending the pianoroll even more, with tools, so if you count together the nanoseconds during a typical workflow, it gets faster and faster. Adding more keyboard shortcuts, simple workflow abbreviations. I absolutely do not care for additional experimental midi features. I actually think there now is a lot of midi stuff already inside. Grid can get a 2 year pause now, too. :hihi: It is good enough to experiment with it the next years.

Custom tags in the file browser would be neat. Also IMHO they could simply remove the plugins' provided tags, because there is no standard, so it is a mess. You should be able to define tags yourself instead, so a clever filtering will be possible.

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antic604 wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 12:42 pm
M-Prod wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 11:23 amI CAN adjust the values with the keys, but CAN't enter values
Sure you can - if you click on any label with value just start typing the number on the keyboard.
Of course, you're right, I have been working in Bitwig so much lately I started to cmd-click knobs in Ableton :dog: Thanks for correcting.
Hanz Meyzer wrote: Tue Dec 17, 2019 3:59 pm I still would prefer workflow, workflow, workflow improvements, e.g. extending the pianoroll even more, with tools, so if you count together the nanoseconds during a typical workflow, it gets faster and faster. Adding more keyboard shortcuts, simple workflow abbreviations. I absolutely do not care for additional experimental midi features. I actually think there now is a lot of midi stuff already inside. Grid can get a 2 year pause now, too. :hihi: It is good enough to experiment with it the next years.
Agree!

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